A new report released by the US Surgeon General last month reminds us that cigarettes are designed with addiction in mind. Tobacco companies infuse tobacco with ammonia so that the nicotine crosses the membranes in the lungs faster, reducin…

In Mississippi, sisters Jamie and Gladys Scott are to be let out of prison on the condition that Gladys donates a kidney to Jamie. (See also an article in the Guardian) They are both serving life sentences for being accessories to armed rob…

There was a jolly fire in the fireplace. The snow was falling outside the windows, to the delight of children and despair of transport planners. Aristotle sipped on the mulled wine, watching while Kant meticulously wrapped another jar of ho…

Would it be a good thing if, far from crushing Wikileaks, governments were required to post their entire correspondence on Wikileaks? In principle, this would appear to be highly desirable. A legitimate ruler over us it might justifiably ke…

One of the growth areas in recent analytic philosophy is social epistemology. Epistemology is concerned with the nature of knowledge, but social epistemology often has a more applied focus. It asks about the conditions under which groups pr…

Amphetamines and major league baseball are in the news again, with a number of busts made for the prescription drug Adderall, which contains several amphetamine stimulants in its list of active ingredients.

I took my son to school this morning. And I’m wondering if that was evil. Proponents of human cognitive enhancement are fond of saying that there is nothing very novel about their suggestions. There is no difference in principle, they sa…

For chess geeks (like me), it’s an exciting week.   Tomorrow will see the start of the London Chess Classic.   It will feature the first, second and forth ranked players in the world.   Apart from their p…

by Alexandre Erler An interesting article recently published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science concludes that people are more likely to transgress moral norms if doing so does not require an explicit action o…

by Anders Sandberg Is mathematics the Christmas present of the year? TheoryMine is a company that uses automatic theorem discovery and proof to generate new theorems via computer, which customers can then buy the naming rights for (for a pa…